One more thing about choice in services:
If you offer people real choice, they don’t have to take it. If they are happy with the current service then they can stick with their current provider. All is good.
However who are we to say that they shouldn’t have that choice? Who are we to dictate any area of people’s lives like that?
The most absurd argument about choice I encounter is that ‘there is no choice now’. Well duh! That’s what I’m saying! We should let other people provide services and let people choose which they think is best. If there’s no demand for a choice then one will not occur and we have the same state (although with some competitive pressure).
We should be offering the the chance for choice to develop. That is fundamental to liberalism any way you look at it.
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November 20th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
The last point is particularly germane.
One does not need to have competition to have competitive pressure; merely the threat of competition will keep providers on their toes, lest they create an opening for a rival.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
You are right that nobody should be against choice in itself. The problem is that the word has come to mean something specific in politics which is less attractive.
It has come to mean schools choosing pupils rather thatn the other way round (making getting your toddelr into a primary school an everyday bureaucratic nightmare). It has come to mean reducing relevant ‘information’ to lowest common denominator target figures.
But worst of all, it has come to mean a situation where the choice mmost people want - a long-term relationship with a particular GP, or in hospital one doctor in charge of the case - is no longer open to them.
This matters, because it is these relationships -doctor/patient, teacher/pupil - that actually make things happen.
So let’s back choice, but let’s think seriously about why the current rhetoric doesn’t work very well.
David